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walking

Ever since I was little, one of my favorite things to do has been walking around outside looking at nature, daydreaming about it and interacting with it. I remember long hours spent in the backyard with my sister exploring, eating weeds, gathering flowers, playing elaborate games of pretend, and naming trees.

Whether consciously or not my parents nurtured this wonderment by bringing us up on a steady diet of PBS nature programs, sci-fi fantasy books and movies, and summer vacations to new biomes. So being outside, wandering around watching plants and animals as they change through the days and seasons has always been there for me as something I truly enjoy even if it got pushed to the background for some years . As I’ve grown older I find myself more and more drawn back to my indescribable love of nature and incorporating this green veil more deeply into every day.

It may sound silly but there is something so soothing, so giddy and centering, so healing for me to just explore with my dog on long walks through the local parks and sanctuaries. Every thing is always changing and I have a compulsion to bring back pieces of that vibrancy to treasure. So I’m constantly gathering up interesting plants, seeds, shells, and feathers; anything that catches my eye and wants to come home.

That’s the easy part though, walking around enjoying myself and finding things. The difficult part comes when my artist side rises up and refuses to leave all these bits about to languish on a shelf. To do them justice I must create something new something beautiful or strange, something that could be close to me and others and hopefully convey my sense of wonderment and whatever emotion I felt when I picked them up to make them a part of my existence.

And so I find myself creating art and fashion in a way that doesn’t seem easy to describe. The closest I can come is to say I craft wearable art from the forest, field, sky, and shoreline.